Yves Saint Laurent born in Algeria in 1936 was one of the most influential and controversial
fashion designers of all time. Perhaps one of the most
iconic fragrance quotes of all time, he famously said "I prefer to shock rather than to bore through repetition". His iconic looks from Le Smoking, women’s tuxedos and the Safari suits also informed his perfumes. He was the first designer to feature multi-cultural models in the 1960s. As a young man, Yves Saint Laurent left Algeria for Paris to work for designer Christian Dior and in 1966 launched his own brand and rose to great fame as the first (then) living designer to receive a solo exhibition in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983.
Yves Saint Laurent fragrances, reflected his life as a fragile man who was also emboldened to take risks. His first masculine scent,
YSL pour homme (Raymond Chaillan) debuted in 1971, an effortlessly sensual perfume that was brilliantly matched with the scandalous advertising, his anti-macho nude portrait shot by Jean Loup Sieff.
Yves Saint Laurent Perfumes were gender fluid long before the term was invented. Yves Saint Laurent Perfumes Eau
Libre broke barriers by featuring a mixed-racial couple sharing it. This line, which was reformulated in 2019, was the first perfume openly marketed as unisex and for its sparkling citrus greenery. The vibrant post war Ville Lumière scene provided him with stimuli and glory. Reflecting all that was wonderful then…. friends, love and dreams fulfilled shine in Yves Saint Laurent Perfumes
Y (Jacques Bercia and Michel Hy)1964, a peach and iris-laden chypre, perfectly suited his connection with the
Rive Gauche intellectuals, which also became the name for one is his
bestselling women's fragrances in 1970.
Yves Saint Laurent spent his whole life struggling with angels and demons, with creativity and thoughts of death, highs and lows, with spiritual love and with lust. The joyful days spent with Pierre Berge shines in
Paris, with its romantic
fruity scent with
notes of roses. But in the controversial Opium, the dark side surfaced, In 1977, the year Opium was produced, it was shocking to suggest such a thing let alone market it.
Opium was boycotted around the world, editorials damned it and it sold out immediately.
In 1993, Yves Saint Laurent introduced a new scent called
Champagne and was sued by the French wine industry. In a clever comeback, Saint Laurent named his contentious fragrance
Yvresse. This is a wonderful play on the French word "ivresse" meaning "intoxication".
"Fashion comes and goes, but style is eternal…" Yves Laurent said. His legacy lives on in
perfumes that are still loved by men and women all over the world.
